I'd be going for one of o2s packages, as they have loads with infinate data. Vodafone (what I'm on) gives you the first 15mb in a 24 hour period for £1, regardless of how much you use. I think the first 1mb is £1, i.e. if you use 500k you pay 50p. After you've hit a pound an 1mb it's then free up to
15mb - then £2 per mb after that. £1 a day doesn't sound a lot, but if you do it every day, that's £30 a month which is another contract. So that's gay.
Ask yourself if you're actually going to use the features like browsing a lot to make it worth a data package. I mean, you have internet at home and work, so do you need it on a phone? I understand why you could Steve, I'm talking to Carl here :-)
Try them first - there are better times of the month to call apparently when they are meeting targets. If they won't play ball, take the PAC and go somewhere else.
JFGI?
I currently use 02 online on a tarriff which doesn't give me a 'free' phone. I just buy a new phone every so often with the money I don't pay o2 for the phone subsidy. I don't have a spiffy phone or use any data so I dunno if it's relevant.
For last year I had a 'free' PCMCIA data card with T-Mobile which gave me a fair use 3gigs of the real life internets a month for £29 a month.
As far as I know, as long as you promise not to plug your phone into a computer and use it as a modem, T-Mobile[1] will add something similar to your tarriff for a quite reasonably fee.
Depends what the reception's like for 2g and 3g where you are and where you work etc.
T-Mobile enabled a 3g mast near my house not long before I cancelled the contract. It was a useful backup as the ADSL can be a bit ropey here.
You don't have to justify what you want to us.
Oh, I see what you did there. Seems to have got a 'chomp'. (c:
[1] But apparently people do and T-Mobile don't notice [2] [2] This may have changed since last year of course.
That gives you up to 700 mins, or up to 1400 texts.
The beauty of it is that you have an 'allowance' of £140 / month to spend as you wish, plus 'unlimited' internet use from your phone (in fact, if you use the phone as a modem and don't cane it, I doubt they'd pull you up for modem use, either).
I have several escape routes from work, sometimes mid route home I hit traffic and can get TomTom traffic data and see if one of my other routes is free, for that to work properly it needs a 3g connection, 2g is too slow to update.
I use it for checking my email at home if out for the day and off work as well, or if I need a postcode for the satnav when I'm not at home.
I don't heavy use, but I do use and currently have to pay for everything.
Both home, work, and close to family is pretty good urban coverage on all the networks.
Orange went patchy for a while near my house. But that was because they had taken 3 of the 4 local transmitters for repair, not noticing that the 4th one was out of order and totally off line. I had trouble then getting any kind of signal.
Poor excuse, really; no BlackBerry / Treo / Centro / smartphone has a truly useful small keyboard, no matter what people tell you. You can buy a wireless keyboard to work with them for heavy duty text entry.
I have never used a PocketPC / Windows Mobile / Windows Smartphone device that was as good as it should have been with one exception; the Orange SPV E200, which was better than I was expecting. I did think that WM5 would be better than previous versions, when first released, but it still had the very stupid "I won't beep to remind you of your meeting even though you've told me to" notifications bug.
I may at some point try WM6. But for now I run a Treo 680 and use OWA for corporate email. My preference for PalmOS devices is more because I don't want a Windows Mobile device with a PalmOS emulator to run my long used PalmOS applications.
BlackBerry devices just work. I borrowed an original Curve for six months and thought it a great piece of kit. It did miss the touch-sensitive screen, but otherwise, it just worked.
The Treo has a 4 Gb SD card and makes for an effective MP3 player. I also have a 3.3 Ah battery on the back to give it decent longevity, but despite this I've just bought a Creative Zen and I'm not looking back, either.
The Treo's keyboard and screen made using playlists dead easy, sound quality was okay enough for use in a noisy environment, but the Zen is noticeably better sounding using the same music file and headphones.
That's down for preference. I only expect my 'phone to produce blurred vague renditions of whatever I'm taking a picture of and leave the proper pictures to Charlie and her assortment of gadgets. :)
I always divorce the handset from the contract as it's cheaper and more flexible. At the moment I'm using T-Mobile's JustSIM with the cheapest data package; £7.50 a month for unlimited* data on Web 'n Walk.
*unlimited here means 1 Gb, no streaming, no sharing your connection; but they have to catch you first.
There are upgrades to Web 'n Walk available, the next one up is £12.50 and includes T-Mobile Hotspot connections, but I won't justify this upgrade yet.
And they're always changing, too; getting a monthly contract is handy. :)
I thought that I'd not be using much data, 'cos after all, it's a 'phone / PDA combination device, right?
Unfortunately, wrong. GoogleMaps and YouTube Mobile are very data intensive. Outlook Web Access is data heavy. Me messing about in forums and stuff is data heavy too. :)
Maybe. We made the switch from Orange to Virgin, piggyback the T-Mobile network, about four years ago. We've since moved to T-Mobile. With the exception of certain corners of my mother's flat in the middle of Lincolnshire and inside a few buildings, using our *current* handsets, coverage has *never* been a problem.
With my last handset, it could probably show a signal and make a call on the moon. :)
Charlie's work Nokia my-first-phone is on Vodafone and struggles in my mother's flat too. Otherwise, we really can't see much of a difference between the two networks *where we live and move around in*.
So really, need to check with whatever network you try... :)
(ironic that handspring was setup by ex palm employees and now the Palm range is almost all ex Handspring products). Still have it somewhere. And I had a Nokia 3650
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keyboard, but not bad gprs and half decent camera but cheap rattly feel.
Then I had a SE Z1010
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was very reliable, but the screen was too small, and it was a little chunky but strangely not too heavy. Then I had the SPV which I really like but fancy something new. Have noticed much difference between win mobile 5 and 6 other than 6 looks better, is slightly faster and uses less memory. No radical changes.
Well, sort of. The current PalmOS and Windows Mobile Treos can trace some of their lineage back to the 600, then further back to the 300 / 270 / 180; the 90 is the oddball one.
The Treo 180 and 600 were great devices but never pushed hard enough in the European market; back when the 180 and 180g were launched, I was sorely tempted, but went down the "pay more per month and get a cheap handset" route with Orange.
What model? The original SPV was a great concept but let down in its execution. The E200, second generation device, added Bluetooth and a much snappier interface; that's the model I bought. Surprisingly decent too.
I'd still have it if I wasn't daft enough to kill the charger port _and_ the repair shop broke it completely.
How about stability? We had some HP messenger devices at the office that worked great for a week or so, then started resetting a lot. We've since gone back to BES with OWA for "selected individuals" who are happy to support their own device.
My Treo won't be suitable for your requirements, but what makes me want PalmOS is the software I've used for a long, long time. I've used PalmOS for eight years now... :)
All phones/blackberries/Smartphones have pretty crap keyboards IME. Get a BB Bold with a bluetooth wireless keyboard. At the mo, I'm responsible for all company mobile phones and berries cos I got it dumped on me a few weeks ago. I've had a lot go through my greasy mitts over this time. The blackberries are by far the best in useability and build quality. Even my shitty 8110 Pearl has the stuff you require bar the 4GB, but it does have an SD card slot.
Oh, I agree totally, It was just a suggestion for Carl. I don't have one. Got one for a guy at work, it's ok, but as you say, definitely not worth carrying around IMO
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